Townshend: I was trying to be white knight over child porn

MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA - MARCH 29: Pete Townsend of the band The Who performs on stage during the 2009 Melbourne Grand Prix at Albert Park on March 29, 2009 in Melbourne, Australia. (Photo by Robert Cianflone/Getty Images) Robert Cianflone/Getty Images

The Who guitarist Pete Townshend has spoken publicly for the first time about his “insane” decision to pay for access to a child pornography site— and said he was trying to prove British banks were complicit in channelling profits from paedophile rings.

He said he regretted the actions which led to his arrest in 2003 on suspicion of using child pornography, but that he was trying to be a “white knight” by investigating the practices.

The star, who was put on the sex offender register, insisted he was only looking at the pictures online for “research” for a campaign against child pornography. He claimed he wanted to demonstrate that child abuse has a financial chain that runs from Russian orphanages to British banks.

In an interview with The Times, which is serialising his memoir Who I Am, Townshend, 67, said: “It’s white knight syndrome. You want to be the one that’s seen to be helping.

“I had experienced something creepy as a child, so you imagine, what if I was a girl of nine or 10 and my uncle had raped me every week? I felt I had an understanding, and I could help.”

In 1999 he paid for the site and pressed a button labelled “click here for child porn” — but cancelled the subscription immediately. However his actions were spotted by officers investigating the sites as part of the FBI-led Operation Ore crackdown which led to almost 4,000 arrests including those of judges, teachers, doctors and more than 50 police.

When police seized his computers and files they found nothing incriminating, but the subsequent publicity left him feeling suicidal. Townshend said: “What I did was insane.”

He adds: “If I had a gun I would have shot myself. It really did feel like a lynching.” He did not speak out sooner or fight the allegations in court because “there was no sense of ‘the truth will out’. The police at Kingston station gave me half an hour to make a decision about whether to go to court or not”.

He added: “My lawyers were as surprised as I was because everyone thought I would be let off. And I thought that if I went to court they would f***ing rip me apart.”